I personally love learning and I couldn’t wait to come to college and learn things I am actually interested in. I say this because in middle and high school we have to take every subject, and I’m not interested in every subject I learned throughout those years. Fortunately, I enjoyed almost every class I took this semester, and I have to say I am lucky to feel this way. In these past 3 months I have adapted new learning strategies and learned what strategies don’t exactly work for me. What I found didn’t work for me was the extensive use of technology. In my high school technology was not something we used everyday, we barely used it at all. Textbooks and novels were what we worked out of, so adapting to this new learning style was somewhat difficult. I have found that writing down notes, instead of typing works better for me. But if it weren’t for trial and error I would have never found this out about myself.
My dream job and the reason I am here at college is to become a high school English teacher. Having this as my dream job, science and math were never my strong suits. My most consistent struggle this semester was my natural resource science class. When picking this class, I thought it would be interesting and more hands on, not a 300-person lecture hall. This was my first time being in this type of classroom environment and I learned that it is just not for me. My professor wanted us to take notes, but he would speak and go through each slide on his power point very quickly which made taking notes impossible. Then when it came time to the tests I never did well in them since I never retained much information. I hated not doing well in the class because I knew how hard my professor worked on preparing each lesson and trying to control our 300-person class. What this class did do for me was help me become a better note taker. I always found myself to be a particularly good note taker, but at my professors fast pace I became even better.
One way I deepened my learning this semester was to not procrastinate as much as I used to. I felt that this helped deepen my learning because when procrastinating I feel rushed and am not taking in fully what I have learned. By not procrastinating I have time to really focus on what I’m working on and to actually understand, and enjoy what I learn. Something else that has really helped me this semester was organization. Keeping a planner is what saved me and if I didn’t have it I would have crashed and burned. In high school keeping a planner for me was never a necessity. I always had my teachers constantly reminding me about future assignments and due dates. College is completely different and having a syllabus was not something I was used to. After receiving my syllabus from each class, I would write down each assignment on its due date in the calendar and that was my constant reminder.
Something I tried getting a grasp of this semester was Evernote. Unfortunately, this note taking, organization website was not for me. I personally am not one to use my laptop for note taking, I prefer hand written notes. No matter how sloppy my notes may look, I understand them. I write reminders and hints on the sides of my notes, color code things, and draw arrows to things that link together. Taking notes on my laptop or Evernote don’t do this for me. I also feel I am slow at typing and that when typing while taking notes my mind doesn’t fully understand what I am writing down. Also, while staring a computer for a long period of time my eyes become sensitive and I get headaches. So, if I needed to refer back to my Evernote to look at notes, it’s not very enjoyable for me.
This semester has taught me a lot. I have learned that I am not one to use technology as a resource of note taking. I also learned that some types of classroom settings aren’t for me. I learned new study habits and tricks as well. I didn’t expect to learn as much as I did in such a short amount of time, but I am happy I did. Now that I know more about myself and my learning habits I feel like I will much more successful in the semesters to come. And I know I will definitely learn more along the way.
My dream job and the reason I am here at college is to become a high school English teacher. Having this as my dream job, science and math were never my strong suits. My most consistent struggle this semester was my natural resource science class. When picking this class, I thought it would be interesting and more hands on, not a 300-person lecture hall. This was my first time being in this type of classroom environment and I learned that it is just not for me. My professor wanted us to take notes, but he would speak and go through each slide on his power point very quickly which made taking notes impossible. Then when it came time to the tests I never did well in them since I never retained much information. I hated not doing well in the class because I knew how hard my professor worked on preparing each lesson and trying to control our 300-person class. What this class did do for me was help me become a better note taker. I always found myself to be a particularly good note taker, but at my professors fast pace I became even better.
One way I deepened my learning this semester was to not procrastinate as much as I used to. I felt that this helped deepen my learning because when procrastinating I feel rushed and am not taking in fully what I have learned. By not procrastinating I have time to really focus on what I’m working on and to actually understand, and enjoy what I learn. Something else that has really helped me this semester was organization. Keeping a planner is what saved me and if I didn’t have it I would have crashed and burned. In high school keeping a planner for me was never a necessity. I always had my teachers constantly reminding me about future assignments and due dates. College is completely different and having a syllabus was not something I was used to. After receiving my syllabus from each class, I would write down each assignment on its due date in the calendar and that was my constant reminder.
Something I tried getting a grasp of this semester was Evernote. Unfortunately, this note taking, organization website was not for me. I personally am not one to use my laptop for note taking, I prefer hand written notes. No matter how sloppy my notes may look, I understand them. I write reminders and hints on the sides of my notes, color code things, and draw arrows to things that link together. Taking notes on my laptop or Evernote don’t do this for me. I also feel I am slow at typing and that when typing while taking notes my mind doesn’t fully understand what I am writing down. Also, while staring a computer for a long period of time my eyes become sensitive and I get headaches. So, if I needed to refer back to my Evernote to look at notes, it’s not very enjoyable for me.
This semester has taught me a lot. I have learned that I am not one to use technology as a resource of note taking. I also learned that some types of classroom settings aren’t for me. I learned new study habits and tricks as well. I didn’t expect to learn as much as I did in such a short amount of time, but I am happy I did. Now that I know more about myself and my learning habits I feel like I will much more successful in the semesters to come. And I know I will definitely learn more along the way.